How can smoking affect critical illness insurance premiums?
As the Surgeon General warns smoking is dangerous to your health. With smoking come additional health risks – the possibility of getting lung cancer, heart disease and respiratory problems. Regardless of whether you are smoking your 5 sticks or 3 packs a day, you can be sure that this habit will affect your health somehow.
Over time, smoking can cause a whole list of diseases, chief of which will be lung cancer, heart disease and pulmonary problems. Other long term results of smoking could be cancer (of the throat, the oesophagus, the mouth, the stomach, the larynx, kidney and other types of cancer), as well as coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure. Smoking can also lead to asthma, stomach ulcers, leukaemia, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, gum disease and Crohn’s disease.
That is why your smoking habit can cost you in terms of insurance premiums. Because of the increased health risks that result from smoking, you can expect higher premiums for your critical illness insurance policy.
All things being equal, a smoker may expect to pay 50 to 75% higher in premiums than a non-smoker. If you’re not willing to stop smoking, this may cost quite a lot, especially if you plan on maintaining your critical illness cover for a long time.
Hope for Those Who Have Stopped Smoking
Those who have kicked the habit need to be worried that they will be perpetually charged with high premiums. Usually, insurance companies will look at whether you have stopped smoking for the past year. If you have stopped a year before your application, you have a higher chance of getting a standard rating with standard premiums. This is, of course, barring other factors that may cause your premiums to increase.
If you already have bought a critical illness policy under a smoker’s premium rating and you have decided to stop smoking, you can also request the insurance company to lower your premiums. However, there may be conditions to this – you need to have quit smoking for at least 12 months and you also need to stop using tobacco replacement devices and products. This includes nicotine gum or nicotine patches.
Recommended useful information to read:
- Are you at risk? Critical Illnesses you may be susceptible to
- Things to consider before getting a critical illness insurance policy
- What you should know about Your Critical Illness Cover: The exclusions to your policy
- Save Up on Premiums: factors that affect Your Critical Illness Insurance premiums
- Dos and Don’ts When Making Critical Illness Insurance Claims
